In the standard Python interactive interpreter, the string printed by the help command when applied to a function includes the function's formal signature. E.g.:
>>> def foo(bar, *baz, **frobozz): ... pass ... >>> help(foo) Help on function foo in module __main__: foo(bar, *baz, **frobozz) Here by "signature" I'm referring to the substring "bar, *baz, **frobozz" shown above (or, equivalently, any other object from which this string could be deduced). (I figured out that I can retrieve this signature using methods in the inspect module.) OK, now, is there a way to modify a function so that pydoc (and presumably also the interactive interpreter's help function, etc.) will print out a desired specific signature for this function? For example, is there some way that I can modify foo above so that help(foo) will print out foo(x, y=None) I tried mucking with foo.func_code's co_argcount, co_varnames, and co_flags attributes, but as it turns out, they are read-only, unfortunately. The context here is the problem of writing a signature-changing decorator in such a way that documentation facilities like help and pydoc will print out the signature of the *original* undecorated code (with some modifications), rather than the signature of the decorated method. TIA! kynn -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
